S-COL: A Copernican turn for the development of flexibly reusable collaboration scripts

Collaboration scripts are usually implemented as parts of a particular collaborative-learning platform. Therefore, scripts of demonstrated effectiveness are hardly used with learning platforms at other sites, and replication studies are rare. The approach of a platform-independent description language for scripts that allows for easy implementation of the same script on different platforms has not succeeded yet in making the transfer of scripts feasible. We present an alternative solution that treats the problem as a special case of providing support on top of diverse Web pages: In this case, the challenge is to trigger support based on the recognition of a Web page as belonging to a specific type of functionally equivalent pages such as the search query form or the results page of a search engine. The solution suggested has been implemented by means of a tool called S-COL (Scripting for Collaborative Online Learning) and allows for the sustainable development of scripts and scaffolds that can be used with a broad variety of content and platforms. The tool’s functions are described. In order to demonstrate the feasibility and ease of script reuse with S-COL, we describe the flexible re-implementation of a collaboration script for argumentation in S-COL and its adaptation to different learning platforms. To demonstrate that a collaboration script implemented in S-COL can actually foster learning, an empirical study about the effects of a specific script for collaborative online search on learning activities is presented. The further potentials and the limitations of the S-COL approach are discussed

Simple threshold rules solve explore/exploit trade‐offs in a resource accumulation search task

How, and how well, do people switch between exploration and exploitation to search for and accumulate resources? We study the decision processes underlying such exploration/exploitation trade‐offs using a novel card selection task that captures the common situation of searching among multiple resources (e.g., jobs) that can be exploited without depleting. With experience, participants learn to switch appropriately between exploration and exploitation and approach optimal performance. We model participants' behavior on this task with random, threshold, and sampling strategies, and find that a linear decreasing threshold rule best fits participants' results. Further evidence that participants use decreasing threshold‐based strategies comes from reaction time differences between exploration and exploitation; however, participants themselves report non‐decreasing thresholds. Decreasing threshold strategies that “front‐load” exploration and switch quickly to exploitation are particularly effective in resource accumulation tasks, in contrast to optimal stopping problems like the Secretary Problem requiring longer exploration

Foraging Online: Understanding How Search Features Influence the Development of Information Search Tactics and Strategies

Online information search behaviour are increasingly pervasive and important in the current era of big data. The design of search features that accommodate to information search behaviour relies on an extensive understanding of how searchers develop search tactics and search strategies. Through the lens of foraging theory, I argue the each type of search features enables a specific search tactic, that is, how searchers advance their search with their minds and actions in accord to the inherent constraints posed by a certain search feature. Furthermore, I hypothesize that the search tactics adopted by a searcher influence his/her search strategy, meaning the planning of the whole search process, and ultimately determines the search outcome. To empirically validate the hypothesis posited in this proposal, I developed an experimental restaurant review website with four contemporary search features implemented. Real information of 1079 restaurants in San Franciscon along with about 268k reviews for these restaurants written by nearly 91k dinners are scraped to populate this website. Future experiment is planned to collect participants’ objective search behavioural data as well as their quantitative and qualitative feedback regarding the search process in order to triangulate my hypotheses

Rational decision-making in medicine: implications for overuse and underuse

open access articleIn spite of substantial spending and resource utilization, today's health care remains characterized by poor outcomes, largely due to overuse (over-testing/treatment) or underuse (under-testing/treatment) of services. To a significant extent, this is a consequence of low-quality decision-making that appears to violate various rationality criteria. Such sub-optimal decision-making is considered a leading cause of death and is responsible for more than 80% of health expenses. In this paper, we address the issue of overuse or underuse of healthcare interventions from the perspective of rational choice theory. We show that what is considered rational under one decision theory may not be considered rational under a different theory. We posit that the questions and concerns regarding both underuse and overuse have to be addressed within a specific theoretical framework. The applicable rationality criterion, and thus the “appropriateness” of health care delivery choices, depends on theory selection that is appropriate to specific clinical situations. We provide a number of illustrations showing how the choice of theoretical framework influences both our policy and individual decision-making. We also highlight the practical implications of our analysis for the current efforts to measure the quality of care and link such measurements to the financing of healthcare services

Humans and Insects Decide in Similar Ways

Behavioral ecologists assume that animals use a motivational mechanism for decisions such as action selection and time allocation, allowing the maximization of their fitness. They consider both the proximate and ultimate causes of behavior in order to understand this type of decision-making in animals. Experimental psychologists and neuroeconomists also study how agents make decisions but they consider the proximate causes of the behavior. In the case of patch-leaving, motivation-based decision-making remains simple speculation. In contrast to other animals, human beings can assess and evaluate their own motivation by an introspection process. It is then possible to study the declared motivation of humans during decision-making and discuss the mechanism used as well as its evolutionary significance. In this study, we combine both the proximate and ultimate causes of behavior for a better understanding of the human decision-making process. We show for the first time ever that human subjects use a motivational mechanism similar to small insects such as parasitoids [1] and bumblebees [2] to decide when to leave a patch. This result is relevant for behavioral ecologists as it supports the biological realism of this mechanism. Humans seem to use a motivational mechanism of decision making known to be adaptive to a heterogeneously distributed resource. As hypothesized by Hutchinson et al. [3] and Wilke and Todd [4], our results are consistent with the evolutionary shaping of decision making because hominoids were hunters and gatherers on food patches for more than two million years. We discuss the plausibility of a neural basis for the motivation mechanism highlighted here, bridging the gap between behavioral ecology and neuroeconomy. Thus, both the motivational mechanism observed here and the neuroeconomy findings are most likely adaptations that were selected for during ancestral times

Not Just Key Numbers and Keywords Anymore: How User Interface Design Affects Legal Research

Legal research is one of the foundational skills for the practice of law. Yet law school graduates are frequently admitted to the bar without adequate competence in this area. Applying both information-foraging theory and current standards for optimal web design, Ms. Jones considers, through a heuristic analysis, whether the user interfaces of Westlaw and LexisNexis help or hinder the process of legal research and the development of effective research skills

A Data-Driven Approach to Measure Web Site Navigability

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Using a Modified Heuristic-Systematic Model to Characterize Information Seeking on the Internet

This study combines two major theories in communication research, Palmgreen and Rayburn\u27s Expectancy-Value approach to media gratifications (1985) and Eagly and Chaiken\u27s Heuristic-Systematic Model (1989), in order to identify the relationships between information seeking tendencies, channel beliefs about specific websites, and website usage for accurate information. Taking a page from schema theory (Rumelhart, 1980), it was expected that individuals who use the Internet frequently to find accurate information have a set of beliefs concerning what a good or bad website has on it. To this end, a study of 130 undergraduate college students was completed. The study had an added experimental manipulation which varied the domain extension and authority of the website given for the task. The analyses performed showed that when given a task of finding accurate information, a higher capacity to understand information predicted which characteristics of a website were highly valued and how likely a given website was to have those characteristics. This in turn predicted website usage. Furthermore, websites with official domain extensions (e.g., .gov) were considered more likely to have desirable characteristics, more likely to contain accurate information than websites with non-official domain extensions (e.g., .com), and were more likely to be used. The study also offers a model of how information seeking, domain extension, and channel beliefs lead to website use